Human dissection was reintroduced into the study of anatomy for the first
time in 1500 years by the Italian universities around 1300. Among the first
notable anatomy teachers was Mondino de' Luzzi (d. circa 1318) whose
Anothomia, published in 1316, would be a popular textbook for the next
200 years. Berengario da Carpi, one of Mondino's successors at the University of
Bologna, produced this massive commentary on the Anothomia in 1521. It is
the first anatomical text to contain illustrations based on human dissections,
of which Berengario performed hundreds. The striking woodcuts are,
unfortunately, too abstract to be useful to the student. Although both Mondinus
and Berengario criticized the anatomical knowledge of the ancients, they did not
succeed in overturning their authority, especially that of Galen, the
2nd century A.D. physician whose works defined medical orthodoxy in
the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.